Entity Framework Core 6 is auto incrementing non-key columns

Question

Entity Framework Core 6 is auto-incrementing columns in my table that it shouldn't be.

I have a table in SQL Server defined like this:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Company]
(
    [Company_ID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [CompanyName] [varchar](100) NOT NULL,  
    [CreatedOnUtc] [datetime] NOT NULL,
    [AccountManager_ID] [int] NULL,
    [Project_ID] [int] NOT NULL,
    [Customer_ID] [int] NOT NULL

    CONSTRAINT [PK_Company] 
        PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([Company_ID] ASC)
                    WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF,
                          IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, 
                          ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON, OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY = OFF) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Company] 
    ADD CONSTRAINT [DF_Company_CreatedOnUtc] DEFAULT (GETUTCDATE()) FOR [CreatedOnUtc]
GO

My entity is defined like this - I am explicitly defining the key column and that it's an identity.

[Table("Company")]
public partial class CompanyEntity
{       
    [Key]
    [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    [Required]
    [DisplayName("Company ID")]
    public int Company_ID { get; set; } 
    
    [Required]
    [MaxLength(100)]
    [DisplayName("Company Name")]
    public string CompanyName { get; set; }  = "";

    [ForeignKey("AccountManager")]
    [DisplayName("Account Manager ID")]
    public int? AccountManager_ID { get; set; }                 
    
    [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Computed)]
    [Required]
    [DisplayName("Created On Utc")]
    public DateTime CreatedOnUtc { get; set; } 
    
    [ForeignKey("Project")]
    //[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None)]
    [Required]
    [DisplayName("Project ID")]
    public int Project_ID { get; set; } 
    
    [ForeignKey("Customer")]
    [Required]
    [DisplayName("Customer ID")]
    //[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None)]
    public int Customer_ID { get; set; } 
    
    public AccountManagerEntity? AccountManager { get; set; } 
    public CustomerEntity Customer { get; set; } = new CustomerEntity();
    public ProjectEntity Project { get; set; } = new ProjectEntity();
}

When I create and save a new CompanyEntity record

var company = new CompanyEntity() 
{
    CompanyName = "Test",
    AccountManager_ID = 1
    Project_ID = 1,
    Customer_ID = 1,
};

Context.Company.Add(company);

await Context.SaveChangesAsync();

What I'd expect to see happen is a new record is added to the Company table that looks like:

Company_ID: xxx (auto-incremented in DB)
CompanyName: Test
AccountManager_ID: 1
Project_ID: 1
Customer_ID: 1
CreatedOnUtc: xx/xx/xxxx (auto generated)

Instead, what I see happening is that both the Project_ID and Customer_ID columns are being automatically incremented. So I'm ending up with records like this:

Company_ID: 1
CompanyName: Test
AccountManager_ID: 1
Project_ID: 1
Customer_ID: 1
CreatedOnUtc: 3/27/2022 18:13:00

Then if I delete this record and run my code again, I end up with another record (which I'd expect), but Project_ID and Customer_ID have incremented instead of using my values:

Company_ID: 2
CompanyName: Test
AccountManager_ID: 1
Project_ID: 2
Customer_ID: 2
CreatedOnUtc: 3/27/2022 18:13:00

I can see in the SQL Server profiler that EF is passing the incremented values. I'm sure this is because of some convention, but I have explicitly set attributes on these columns. AccountManager_ID seems to work OK - the only difference with that one is it's not a required field. I also tried adding

[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None)]

to Project_ID / Customer_ID, but that did not make any difference.

How do I tell EF, "don't do that"?

EDIT: OK, I figured out why this was happening. Because I'm creating an instance of both the CustomerEntity and ProjectEntity as default values, it's assuming I am also creating new records in these other tables. Removing the = new *Entity(); portion fixed the issue. I had only added these to make the compiler warning about the non-nullable property having a value when it exits the constructor go away. Oops.

public CustomerEntity Customer { get; set; } = new CustomerEntity();
public ProjectEntity Project { get; set; } = new ProjectEntity();

Answer 1

This code automatically creates new instances of Customer and Project and assignes new keys

public CustomerEntity Customer { get; set; } = new CustomerEntity();
 public ProjectEntity Project { get; set; } = new ProjectEntity();

leave just like this

public CustomerEntity Customer { get; set; } 
 public ProjectEntity Project { get; set; }